For Steven
by Peachysuffocation
Summary: Andrew is having a hard time coping with Steve's death, but maybe it's okay.


It is just after midnight and the stars refuse to shine. The moon glints through the clouds, allowing dull streams of light to project onto his worn face. He hovers above the ground, a few feet high, debating on whether or not to continue. There is an anxious feeling crawling up his throat and he feels as if he is committing a crime.

With criminal guilt swallowed by tattered sorrow, he follows through with the inevitable. The unsteady sound of his heartbeat thumping in his ears is the only thing he can hear behind the bass drop of desolation.

Andrew Detmer landed cautiously onto loose soil, feeling the ground give below him as if threatening to cave. It rained not long ago, the surface is damp beneath him, squelching with the impact of his trainers.

He is tense, his gaze scanning regretfully over the plot in front of him. There is a grave, one graced with wilting flowers and soaked letters, ink smeared from the rain; it wished away the despair written in haste not long ago.

He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes, blurring his vision away from the sight. But he doesn't dare cry, he doesn't have the right. There is a tightening in his throat, anxiety is unraveling in his stomach, sending prickling spikes of fear throughout his body.

He breaks out in a cold sweat, swallowing back the itch that scratches the back of his throat uncomfortably. He is surrounded by buried remorse, it seems to be under his clothes, beneath his feet.

Andrew wants to apologize. He wants to break down and pour his heart out to the boy who had it in the first place. He wishes there is a way to explain, to give an explanation to something horrendous; but there is nothing to say.

Apologies are for broken plates on your kitchen floor, not for accidentally murdering your best friend. He wants the grave below him to belong to someone else, he wants to believe in lies, he wants to be dreaming.

The cemetery is lugubriously dark around him, but even his greatest fears cannot surmount to the gloom he felt.

The sky above him grumbles, signaling the return of rain. He shoves his trembling hands in his pockets and takes deep, controlled breaths as if to stop the tears from falling. He is not the one who should be crying.

There is a ringing in his ears, filling his head with jumbled melodies of what once is. It is a deafening sound, one that pulls him forward and shoves him onto his knees, his fingers are splayed against the dirt as he gasps for air.

The composure he thought he had shattered, falling into pieces below him. He draws in a choked breath, the rain pouring onto his quivering form as he succumbed to the sickness. The clothes he has on are soaked from the rain, sticking to his skin uncomfortably.

''I was afraid that night,'' he wept out, fingernails now digging into the earth, ''I thought all the time we had spent together was a joke to you.''

Andrew shook his head, knowing that this conversation is one-sided and useless in the face of everything that he had done. He struggles to breathe, his lungs feel restrained and limited as he heaves for air.

There is a long pause, the words settling around him as he stares at the tombstone, barely breathing, the white marble is a stark backdrop to the drooping petals of the flowers, even in the vast, endless night they are pretty. It is strange to find beauty in something so gruesome.

He is at a loss for words, his tongue feels heavy in his mouth and his throat is sore with the exertion of holding back sobs. It is a ponderous weight on his shoulders to realize that it would never be the time for repention; sinners do not deserve ease, he knows. The act of praying to God is passed his will, it is too late and too much for someone like him.

Andrew looks hard at the grave in front of him, taking in the engraved letters and numbers, those that marked a short life and a death sentence given unfairly.

He thinks back to the days in which Steve is alive and thriving. They would spend hours together on his bedroom floor, speaking about nothing in particular, even as time rolled on without them; they would still be bubbling with laughter in the late hours of the night.

The world around him goes silent as the rain dies off, he feels drowsy in the aftermath of his internal affair. Beneath his anger and guilt, there is something that lies solely in the pits of his emotions. Sadness.

It is different from his other feelings, it does not move. It sleeps in the small of his stomach, sending wavering drones of remorse through his body. It seems to echo in his head, the realization that his best friend is gone makes him nauseous and lightheaded. Not all of us have the chance to say goodbye.

Andrew pulls himself up from the soaked ground and wiped his muddy hands on his blue jeans. He ignores the numbness taking over his body and the way it draws him in, offering him an unfeeling mind.

He pushes off of the ground, his body rising into the air with ease. He is levitating, his body surrendering to the dizzying feeling of power thrumming in his veins. He looks down upon the grave, wondering what life would be life if Steve were still alive.

Andrew considers the night that he and Steve tried to determine their own futures. As if random guesses could create a solid bridge to cross, as if hope could save a life.

'' _What do you think life will be like after high school?'' Steve asks, breaking the settled silence around them._

 _Andrew shrugs, but the thought makes his gut wrench. He knows Steve's life will be promising, full of college parties and long, interesting classes with like-minded people._

 _It is bothersome to even think of his own future. He wonders if he'll survive long enough to make it to graduation, if he'll make it past his teenage years without getting himself killed. Self-loathing comes easily to him._

 _He is almost pacified by someone else's future in that moment, with nothing to hope for, Steve is the most promising thing he'll ever know of._

'' _I know you'll have a great one,'' he tells him, his voice trembling involuntarily. He cringes, drawing his eyebrows together and squeezing his eyes shut in scorn of himself._

 _Beside him, planted on a squeaky swing, Steve laughs. It surprises him considerably, causing him to flinch away from the grumbling sound. ''You mean,_ _ **we'll**_ _have a great one?''_

'' _We will?'' Andrew questions, eyebrows now raised high in confusion._

'' _We will.'' The other boy confirms, grinning at him in such a way that is so heartbreakingly sincere that Andrew smiles back. The fluttering returns, uncaging thousands of butterflies in his stomach; the world around them is bland compared to Steve's smile._

Andrew frowns at the memory and with a growing sense of grief, his stomach lurches violently, dropping his body from the air onto the soggy ground. He is met with a dull ache, it is slow and agonizing as it climbs up his left side; the pain becoming worse and worse with his incessant movement.

He whines, curling in on himself. It hurt to move, to breathe. Why now? Why would this happen? Why did Steve have to die and leave him behind? How could he have been so stupid?

There is mud coating his skin, marring his pale complexion as he rocks back and forth in the dirt, desperately trying to calm his fretting anxiety. It builds in his chest, the urge to cry overflows from within.

Andrew sobs uncontrollably, unable to call for help and sickened with remorse. He has nothing to return home for and no one to wait for him anymore. He exists within his own whim, forgetting familiar faces as he fades in and out of reality.

He has spent days wondering when it would finally be over for him. He has fantasized about the day the depression would end and the light would capture him in an endless photograph. A wish for death is not something you can openly plead for.

He chokes backs his tears, his throat is sore and his nose is running, but he has to say it. He should have said it when Steve was alive when he was able to know that Andrew meant it.

Those words hadn't left his mouth in years. He had watched his mother die and wouldn't dare tell her because he knew that she understood. The utterance of those words made it all too real, but now, collapsed in front of his best friend's grave, those words do not seem like too much.

Steve Montgomery had a quick mind and a large heart. He was compassionate in ways that Andrew had never seen, always giving. The thought ripped a particularly loud sob out of him, he struggles to stay in control.

''I love you,'' he croaks, voice strangled and weak. The sun peeks over the horizon, allowing bright rays of light to wash the darkness away from the cemetery. It filters through the trees that loom over the fences and glints on Andrew Detmer's face. With reddened cheeks and watery eyes, he smiles.

 _I think I'll miss you forever like the stars miss the sun in the morning skies._


End file.
